David goes to Greenland

by David Binney Putnam

There were six white men, three of the Police and three H. B. C. Maurice Timbury was the constable in charge for the Police and George Dunn is the factor at the H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice to us and they gave us a grand time. We had dinner with the Police and then a dance at the H. B. C. house, which was very lively and lots of fun. The music was a Victrola and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also Nette, the Greenland girl whom we are taking [[148]]around to Holsteinsborg, was quite the belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. Rasmussen is a great dancer.

The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to be much different from those in Greenland. The women tattoo their faces and wear different sorts of clothes. Just there at the Post, where they get lots of white men’s things, the native clothing isn’t seen much and I don’t believe that so much “store” food is so very good for them. Anyway, the crowd I saw seemed sort of puny and soft compared with the fine husky fellows we had been seeing on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks over here seemed bigger and wider than those of the Greenland Eskimos.

The meat from the walrus we had killed up on Jones Sound we brought to Pond’s Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They seemed very pleased, for it is fine dog food and they do not get walrus in those waters any more. In return for our gifts some women [[149]]came on board and finished fleshing off the walrus and seal skins which we had not done yet. Then they were salted some more and put in barrels and headed up to go back to the Museum. It was a terrible job to get the grease off the decks and for a few days after they were as slippery as a skating rink.

We went down to some old Eskimo winter houses, or stone igloos a mile or so from the Station. They were very old and were used by a people so many years ago that the present Eskimos don’t know anything about them and believe that they were quite a different race. Dr. Rasmussen says that from the things found in this old village, compared with others that have been studied, the people lived there probably about a thousand years ago and in some places even earlier and about the time the Norsemen first came to Greenland in the year one thousand and later.

These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in [[150]]a circle, mostly about fifteen feet or a little more across. There is a small outer room which is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep the inner place warmer. It is so low that they must have had to creep in on their hands and knees. After creeping in there seems to be a kind of step up into the inner room. The main room, I guess, was about five feet high, with a raised platform all around it a couple of feet above the central floor which is just a sort of small square in the middle.

Dr. Rasmussen Shows David an Ancient Eskimo Harpoon Head.

In one corner of the raised part, usually near the door, the cooking was done. The platform at the back was used for sleeping, and it is all built up very neatly with flat stones, the walls made of stone and turf and whale bone. The roof was flat rock and bone. In some places whale ribs seem to have been used as rafters to support the walls and perhaps the ceiling. They certainly must have been very warm and strong houses. I forgot to say that they really are partly [[151]]under ground, for the floor level is usually a couple of feet lower than the level of the outer ground.

We did some digging around these houses and at some of the old graves. And the next day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall and his assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, in their motor boat twelve miles along the Inlet to some other old houses.

We found a few very nice things like spear heads and snow knives made of bone and ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or dish carved out of bone. Later on Dad got from some of the white men the things they had collected so that altogether we got together quite a fine lot of very interesting things. And many of them really came from the “stone age” of these people, when they made everything they had from stone, like flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory.